At the congress of the I.O.C. in Paris, held from 15 to 23 June 1914, association
football was included as an obligatory part of the programme of the 1916 Berlin
Olympics, in spite of French pressure to have it removed (at that point,
France's Olympic football record consisted of two losses with a combined scoreline
of 1-25 and extremely late withdrawals from both the consolation event
in 1908 and the entire tournament
of 1912); on the other hand, rugby football,
preferred by the French, was among the sports discarded from the programme.
After a German proposal to admit women to certain sports had been accepted, in spite
of opposition from France and the United States (in 1912, women had entered in
swimming and lawn tennis), the French were again thwarted when they attempted to have
the women's results excluded from the general classification of the participating
countries, a misogynic motion only supported by Belgium, France, Japan and the
United States. Eventually, it was decided to allow female competitors in lawn
tennis and sailing while suggestions to also let them enter the football (!) and
rowing events did not meet with approval.
Another issue raised at that 1914 congress in Paris was the "nationalities question", more specifically the Olympic status of Bohemia within the Habsburg Empire and that of Finland within the Romanov one. Eventually, both Bohemia and Finland were excluded from the list of 36 countries eligible to enter the Games of the VIth Olympiad. They would have to seek permission from their imperial governments to enter as a separate nation, which, as everyone knew, was unlikely to be granted. At the 1912 Olympics, Finland had performed splendidly, winning more gold medals (9, three alone by long-distance runner Hannes Kolehmainen, the first of the Flying Finns) than the four imperial states of Russia (0), Austria (0), Hungary (3) and Germany (5) combined; they had also defeated Russia in the football tournament on their way to finish fourth. Only the United States (26), hosts Sweden (24, of which 7 from among the insanely inflated number of 18 shooting events) and Great Britain (10) had collected more gold medals.
A week later, the F.I.F.A. held its annual two-day meeting in Kristiania, the
Norwegian capital renamed Oslo in 1924. On the first day, 27 June, two Dutch
proposals were discussed: that of publishing an official yearbook (accepted
after some debate about the cost and the number of languages in which to publish
it), and that of taking the Olympic football tournament under the auspices of
the F.I.F.A.; after a reformulation suggested by the Swiss federation, it was
unanimously agreed that the F.I.F.A. would acknowledge the Olympic football
games as the amateur world championship in football, provided the matches
would be subject to the regulations and wishes of the F.I.F.A.
The meeting also accepted membership applications from football federations
from Spain and the United States, while the decision on the admission of the
União Portuguesa de Futebol was adjourned (an earlier Portuguese football
federation, the Liga Portuguesa de Football, had been members until 1911;
the União would obtain provisional membership in August 1914).
That meant that at that moment football federations from 24 countries
were F.I.F.A. members: Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Denmark,
England, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg,
Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Scotland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland,
United States and Wales. Of those, all but Finland and the four individual
members from the United Kingdom were eligible to enter the Olympic Games
according to the decisions taken at the I.O.C. congress earlier that month.
However, on the final day of that F.I.F.A. meeting, 28 June 1914, a
Bosnian Serb terrorist assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to throne of
the Habsburg Empire, and his wife Sophie, thereby setting off a chain of events
leading to the outbreak of World War I, and, rather less dramatically, the
impossibility to hold Olympic Games in 1916.
Instead, two neutral countries, the Netherlands and
Sweden, staged multi-sports "Spelen",
both of course including a (domestic) football competition; the two Olympic
football champions of 1916 were Göteborgs Fotbollsdistrikt
and Sparta of Rotterdam.
The football tournament was to last less than a week. The registration deadline
was to be 28 April 1916 and that for submitting the final composition of the
teams 15 May. A preliminary schedule, proposed by
the D.F.B. (Deutscher Fußball-Bund), envisaged eight matches in the first
round on 30 and 31 May 1916, followed by quarter-finals on 1 June and
semi-finals on 2 June before the bronze medal game on 3 June and the final
on 4 June, implying (at most) sixteen teams were expected to enter.
On the other hand, the DRAfOS (Deutscher Reichsausschuß für Olympische Spiele)
planned a consolation tournament for the teams eliminated in the first round,
whose winners were to re-enter the tournament proper together with the winners
of the first round. How these two concepts were to be combined
is unclear (cf. [BuL (Band 2)], p. 226).
The D.F.B. also suggested to divide the participating teams into two groups (A and B),
apparently with the idea of some sort of seeding before the draw, a novelty
which eventually would be introduced twenty years later, also in Berlin, at
the 1936 Olympics.
Presumably this suggestion was made with the rather unbalanced draw at
the 1912 Olympics in mind, which had given both
Denmark and Finland an extremely easy path to the semi-final stage compared to
the quarter of the draw (which had included Germany) from which the Netherlands
had emerged among the final four.
Football matches were to be played at various venues in Berlin, with the main one being the newly built "Deutsches Stadion" in Grunewald, opened on 8 June 1913 in the presence of the emperor, who was celebrating his silver throne jubilee that month; part of the inauguration festivities ("Stadion-Weihe") was a football match, the final of the Kronprinzenpokal, an annual competition between the regional football federations of Germany, in which Westdeutschland defeated hosts (Berlin-)Brandenburg by 5 goals to 3. It is not known whether any decision had already been taken on the other grounds to be used for the Olympic football tournament, but they most likely would have included the Union 92-Sportplatz and the Viktoria-Platz, both in Mariendorf, which had both hosted the final of the Kronprinzenpokal in earlier seasons.
Venue Capacity Matches Total Att. Average Paying Att. Average Deutsches Stadion 30,000 - - - - -
Svenska Spelen (Sweden) | Nationale Olympische Spelen (Netherlands)
Svenska Spelen
NB: the Svenska Spelen were a multi-sports event held between 8 and 16 July 1916
in Stockholm, at which Denmark and Norway participated in athletics, cycling,
fencing, rowing, shooting and wrestling; in other sports, including football,
only Swedish athletes started;
the football tournament started on 2 July at various venues in Sweden and was
contested by representative teams of the subfederations (fotbollsdistrikt) of
the Svenska Fotbollförbundet; it is also considered as the first edition of
the Svenska Fotbollsveckan, held annually between 1916 and 1925.
First Preliminary Round
2 July 1916 - Boden
Norrbotten 7-3 Västerbotten
2 July 1916 - Gävle
Gästrikland 7-0 Dalarne
Second Preliminary Round
2 July 1916 - Eskilstuna
Södermanland 2-1 Västmanland-Närike
HT: 2-1
2 July 1916 - Halmstad
Halland 3-4 Västergötland [a2et]
FT: 2-2 A1ET: 3-3
2 July 1916 - Norrköping
Östergötland 9-0 Småland
7 July 1916 - Stadion, Stockholm
Stockholm 8-1 Norrbotten
9 July 1916 - Gävle
Gästrikland 1-2 Uppland
byes: Bohuslän-Dal, Göteborg, Skåne
Quarter-Finals
2 July 1916 - Walhalla idrottsplats, Göteborg
Göteborg 5-1 Bohuslän-Dal
9 July 1916 - Hälsingborg
Skåne 6-2 Västergötland
9 July 1916 - Norrköping
Östergötland 3-1 Södermanland
10 July 1916 - Stadion, Stockholm
Stockholm 4-0 Uppland
HT: 3-0
Semi-Finals
12 July 1916 - Stadion, Stockholm
Stockholm 3-2 Östergötland
HT: 0-0
Stockholm: Erik Bergkvist, T. Malm, Gustafsson, Karlsson, Lindström, Gustafsson,
Bergström, Gunnarsson, Svensson, Groth, Karlsson.
Östergötland: Lindberg, Johansson, Hagelin, Berglund, Malmkvist, Magnusson,
Pettersson, Ljungström, Andersson, Samuelsson, Jonsson.
ref: B. Modin (Gävle).
13 July 1916 - Stadion, Stockholm - att: 2,000
Göteborg 1-0 Skåne
HT: 0-0
ref: R. Gelbord.
Third Place Match
14 July 1916 - Stadion, Stockholm
Skåne 2-0 Östergötland
HT: 1-0
Skåne: Sjöstrand, H. Olsson, O. Pettersson, K. Karlsson, Sandberg, Th. Karlsson,
G. Nilsson, Marowyansky, Malm, E. Bengtsson, Ström.
Östergötland: Lindberg, Johansson, Hagelin, Berglund, Malmkvist, Magnusson,
Pettersson, Ljungström, Andersson, Samuelsson, Jonsson.
ref: K. Holm.
Final
16 July 1916 - Råsunda idrottsplats, Solna - Att: 9,000
Stockholm 2-4 Göteborg
HT: 0-2
Stockholm: Bergqvist; Malm, Backlund; Lindström, Wicksell, Gurra Karlsson;
Rune Bergström, Gunnarsson, Ivar Svensson (cap), Kalle Gustafson, Karlstrand.
Göteborg: J. Karlsson; V. Lund, H. Svensson; Karl Olsson, K. Törnqvist, H. Almén;
H. Magnusson, K. Schylander, E. Börjesson (cap), E. Hjelm, J. Appelgren.
ref: E. Albihn (Norrköping).
NB: the day after the final, winners Göteborg played third-placed Skåne in a
friendly, winning 1-0.
Nationale Olympische Spelen
NB: already in 1914, the Dutch Olympic Committee had suggested to arrange "Nationale
Olympische Spelen" in Amsterdam on 19 and 20 June 1915, to prepare for the 1916
Olympics in Berlin; when it had become clear no Olympics were going to be held,
it was decided to stage the national event a year later, as a sort of substitute
for the international one; contests in 18 different sports were held, including
a football tournament between the four Dutch regional football champions:
Be Quick (Groningen) – 1915/16 winners of the Tweede Klasse Noord;
Go Ahead (Deventer) – 1915/16 winners of the Eerste Klasse Oost;
Sparta (Rotterdam) – 1915/16 winners of the Eerste Klasse West; and
Willem II (Tilburg) – 1915/16 winners of the Eerste Klasse Zuid;
in the spring of 1916 the latter three clubs had already contested the national
championship between them, with Willem II claiming the title; the venue of all
four matches, the Nederlandsch Sportpark, was later used for two encounters at
the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam.
Semi-Finals
30 August 1916 - Nederlandsch Sportpark, Amsterdam
Willem II 4-1 Be Quick
HT: 0-0
[Oving (og) 1-0, Van Son 2-0, Van Lingen 2-1, own goal 3-1, Briaire 4-1]
Willem II: W. van den Berg; H. van Gerwen, P. Stevens; A.M. Versluys, H. Mommers,
L. Schollaert; H. van Asten, J. van Son, Jansen, M. van Beurden, J. Briaire.
Be Quick: Bezemer; B. Oving, H. Everts; T. Visser, P. Potjer, C. Mössinger;
Jansen, Meijer, E. van Linge, W. Versteeg, M. Tetzner.
ref: M. Bos.
31 August 1916 - Nederlandsch Sportpark, Amsterdam
Sparta 2-0 Go Ahead
HT: 2-0
[De Groot 30, 35]
[match postponed from 30 August due to heavy rain]
Sparta: Vliegenthart; G.B. de Grooth, Klip; Martin, De Korver, Brandes;
Van der Wolk, Roomberg, Huug de Groot, Steeman, Groosjohan.
Go Ahead: J.W. Zandvliet; A. Pijpenbroek, J. Oostenenk; F. Kolkman, Koster,
E. Haes; Nijenhuis, V.d. Waerde, Evers, Jansen, Quentemeijer.
ref: G. Bouwmeester.
Third Place Match
31 August 1916 - Nederlandsch Sportpark, Amsterdam
Go Ahead 4-0 Be Quick
HT: 1-0; played over 2x30 minutes
[Quentemeijer 1-0, Jansen 2-0, Quentemeijer 3-0, Oving (og) 4-0]
Go Ahead: J.W. Zandvliet; A. Pijpenbroek, J. Oostenenk; F. Kolkman, Koster,
W. Kolkman; Nijenhuis, E. Haes, Evers, Jansen, Quentemeijer.
Be Quick: Bezemer; B. Oving, H. Everts; T. Visser, P. Potjer, C. Mössinger;
Jansen (Bulder?), Meijer, E. van Linge, W. Versteeg, M. Tetzner.
ref: H. Verbeek.
Final
31 August 1916 - Nederlandsch Sportpark, Amsterdam: att: 5,000
Sparta 4-0 Willem II
HT: 1-0; played over 2x37½ minutes
[De Groot 35, 42, 44, Groosjohan ~70]
Sparta: Vliegenthart; G.B. de Grooth, Klip; Martin, De Korver, Brandes;
Van der Wolk, Roomberg, Huug de Groot, Groosjohan, Steeman.
Willem II: W. van den Berg; H. van Gerwen, P. Stevens; A.M. Versluys, H. Mommers,
L. Schollaert; H. van Asten, J. van Son, Jansen, M. van Beurden, J. Briaire.
ref: H.A. Tromp.
Sources included: [BuL (Band 2)], [FIF 31], various contemporary Dutch newspapers (available through Delpher), various contemporary Swedish newspapers (available through Svenska tidningar).
Prepared and maintained by Karel Stokkermans for the Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation
Author: Karel Stokkermans
(karel.rsssf@gmail.com)
Last updated: 27 Sep 2024
(C) Copyright Karel Stokkermans and RSSSF 2024
You are free to copy this document in whole or part provided that proper acknowledgement
is given to the author. All rights reserved.